Recent reviews by cpm4001

Wonderful game. A little rough around the edges in a few places but fantastic work overall. Worth getting even though it's only in Early Access; look forward to seeing what the devs put together next!

Getting hyped for this was a mistake. Multiplayer's pretty good, singleplayer's pretty bad.


PROS:

1) Multiplayer - I never played ranked MP for the original and haven't played public MP in this, so I can't speak to whether the DE's MP is a downgrade or not in that regards. However, given what a pain trying to play casual MP with your friends was in the original AoE III the new version's a marked improvement, as long as you have a small group of people to play with. I also personally like the decision to unlock all cards from the beginning, as it gives you more choices for deck building right from the start - that said, I get that some people miss the leveling-up process (which I found more of a grind, honestly).

2) New civs - More choice! Haven't played the Inca yet but the Swedes are pretty fun (CAROLEAN CHARGES), and more options are always good, though some more effort put into balance would've been nice.


CONS:

1) Bugs - Wow, there are a lot of bugs. I've run into problems with cross-platform MP not working, audio issues, walls not building properly, controls going weird...and those are minor issues relative to some of the other things players have run into (see: file deletion). Oh yeah, and the AI likes to derp a lot (in some ways it's worse than it was in the original version, which is kind of impressive really). This is not a finished game.

2) Inept changes to avoid 'offense' - Revising the campaigns and game as a whole to be more historically accurate/less offensive could've been done well, and some stuff (like renaming the Sioux to Lakota, or the Iroquois to their endonym) is fine. Unfortunately the devs half-arsed it and the end result is embarrassingly bad. Don't waste your time doing the non-Asian Dynasties campaigns in the DE, at least if you have good memories of the original (in which case you're probably an evil imperialist or something, I dunno how these peoples' minds work).

3) Bizarre changes to avoid 'offense' - OH MY GOD THE WORD PLANTATION IS TRAUMATIZING!!!1!!1!11!1!

FINAL RECOMMENDATION: 4.5/10 - Get it on sale for the multiplayer if you have friends to play with. Otherwise get the original version (unless you're emotionally devastated by the words 'plantation', 'colonial', or 'discovery', in which case grow up or go into academic history).

Here's how it works:

1) Install Mass Effect

2) Boot up Mass Effect

3) Wait through title credits

4) Hear "Vigil" play for the first time

5) Press Any Key and get a satisfying tone in response

6) Start game

7) Have life changed forever

Just play it already. For all its outdated graphics (though there are mods that help with that), horrible inventory system, and occasional extreme corniness (it really helps if you like cheesy movies because there are points where the game, both intentionally and unintentionally, starts to become one), this is one of the greatest games ever made, with some of the best characters (though a couple don't really start to shine until ME2) and most memorable encounters all set in one of the greatest fictional universes ever thought up.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go blast some geth. Flashlight-headed little twerps.

Possibly the most underrated game of 2018. A great espionage thriller mixing fun tactical gameplay, conspiracy theories, and clever strategic management, but hampered by limited development resources and a now-deceased dev studio.

PROS:

1) Great atmosphere - The devs absolutely nailed this part of the game. If you're a fan of late Cold War geopolitical history, you'll love how the writers tied together things like the sinking of the Soviet submarine K-429, the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, and the downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007 into a single conspiracy-laden plot. If you like spy fiction (of the Fleming, not Le Carre, variety), jump in and have a blast as your own Cabal breaks up an evil organization's plots. If you like the '80s, check out the posters for roller discos, the old-style computer terminals, and literally everyone's hair. And if you fancy conspiracy theories, well, they're a blast too. Things like the infamous (and failed in our reality) CIA mind control project MK/ULTRA serve as major gameplay elements, while winks are given to everything from Area 51 conspiracy theorist Bob Lazar to the idea that Paul (and the rest of the Beatles) are dead to nefarious revelations about the true purpose behind "The X-Files". Great fun all in all.

2) No RNG in combat - It's actually kind of hard to go back to XCOM after playing this game. Here, if you can take a shot, you'll hit for a set amount of damage (determined based on the enemy's awareness, cover, your weapon, and the distance you're shooting at.) No missing a 98% chance to hit. No rolling minimum damage and leaving an enemy alive with one hitpoint. Unlike in XCOM, where the 'strategy' often ends up as trying to figure out how to handle an enemy after somebody missed an easy shot, in Phantom Doctrine the strategy revolves around figuring out how to maximize the efficiency of your team to take out as many enemies as possible. Of course there's also...

3) The fact you usually don't *have* to fight - A lot of reviewers given the game grief for its stealth mechanics being overpowered, and I agree they could've used some balancing. However, the fact that stealth is even a valid option is great. Indeed, if you go into this game expecting to play it like XCOM (guns blazing grenades flying etc.) you'll fail. I suspect that may be the driving force behind many negative reviews - in Phantom Doctrine, your goal is to sneak around and avoid combat if (and however) possible, because if the alarm is raised you'll be swamped with endless enemy reinforcements (knowledge of which definitely raises the tension for some levels). Now, I agree that stuff like body disposal makes some levels trivially easy; good thing Hard Difficulty disables that option so you suddenly have to be really careful about where you knock someone out. In my view, concerns about stealth are somewhat overblown (and hey, at least unlike in XCOM stealth actually is an option).

4) The strategic elements - Phantom Doctrine's strategic gameplay is quite solid. Base expansion and upgrades require careful money management, while (particularly as the game goes on) the need to have truly global operations forces you to consider how you spread your agents out around the world. You also have to consider whether you interrupt an enemy operation, whether you let it happen, or whether you assault it to potentially get more rewards at a higher risk. Then you need to figure out when and how you give your agents drugs to make them operate better (ssh, it's just a game, you should really just relax) and whether you brainwash enemy agents into being your plants or just interrogate and shoot them. Very well handled.

5) The Analysis board - In real life intelligence analysis is kind of tedious. However, in this game, you get a conspiracy theory corkboard and a bunch of documents, and are tasked with connecting keywords to link places, organizations, and people. A particularly good minigame.


CONS:

1) Repetitive storylines - Far and away the biggest problem with this game is its relative lack of replayability. While it's far from a game you play once and then put aside (it's fun to go through all three campaigns, and not bad to come back to occasionally), the fact that the three campaigns converge after their first chapter seriously weakens the game. In an ideal world each of the three campaigns (CIA, KGB, and a third intelligence group) would have been completely distinct, although references to events in one would crop up in others. I assume the overlapping campaigns is due to the relatively limited resources of the development studio, but it's hard to get excited about playing through the rest of the game's chapters, including major plot points, over and over again with the only differences being who your team is.

2) Slightly opaque combat mechanics in the tactical levels - Though vastly improved from release, there are still some points that probably should be made clearer. For instance, enemy agents will only come looking for you if you eliminate more than two soldiers or civilians before taking the agent out, but nowhere does the game tell you that. Likewise, turns out you can safely stand one of your agents behind an enemy soldier in a restricted zone if your agent's in disguise, but if they're undisguised then an alarm will be triggered as soon as you end your turn. The game doesn't tell you that either. On the whole, these are relatively minor complaints, but they sure keep me from wanting to play Ironman mode.

3) A dead studio - The biggest problem. This game desperately needs a DLC or two, fleshing out the world, campaigns, or maybe combat. Unfortunately, due apparently to some kind of mismanagement, the dev team has left and the game is now essentially dead. Thankfully it's in a playable state, so there's no concerns from that perspective, but the potential of this game and setting (the surface of which has only been scratched) will never be fully achieved. Additionally, although some modding capacity is present, the potential for any kind of XCOM-esque Long War mod (which would be jaw-droppingly amazing) is nil. Very disappointing.

FINAL RECOMMENDATION: 9.5/10 - Get it, but wait for a sale ($40 is a bit steep, $30 or less is about right).

This game is frustrating as hell. Stagger your way to the objective of the map (the Golden Pyramid) a day before your rivals get there, clinging to the last threads of sanity and with three of your team members dealing with infected wounds from an attack by a giant crab? Too bad, you need to go all the way back across the map to press some button to unlock the pyramid!
And that's exactly what a game of this sort should be like. 10/10, GET IT. Also, Tintin's in it.

30/10 made me the only blatant imperialist on my university's campus.

I think this may well be the greatest game ever made. Yes, the controls are clunky as all get out. Yes, for people used to today's games the ultra-high-tech-for-1997-digital-rotoscoping technique looks extremely antiquated. Yes, you're dropped into the game with no idea what to do, and you're going to fail. A lot. But at the same time "The Last Express" includes:

* Probably the best-developed characters in any adventure game I've yet played (the weakest is arguably Robert Cath, who the player controls, but even he has an intriguing and irritatingly-largely-unrevealed-due-to-lack-of-a-sequel backstory). By the end of the game you know what they want and what makes most of them tick, and since certain bad things are more or less guaranteed to happen to a number of them the result is the equivalent of an emotional shovel to the face.

* An excellent plot. Your friend/comrade-in-arms Tyler Whitney has been murdered, on the Orient Express, on July 24th, 1914. Except...there's no Hercule Poirot to solve the murder for you, and in fact if you were even to tell people there's been a murder they'd arrest you. So you have to lob Tyler's body off the train, bluff it out, and figure out why and how your friend died, and how the intertwined relationships between all the other characters on the train fit into this crime. Admittedly, in my opinion there was a bit too much Indiana Jones and not quite enough Alfred Hitchcock (to use previously-used terms) at the very end, but otherwise it was fine. Even the romance (come on, you weren't expecting there NOT to be a romance, were you?) actually fits quite nicely into the story, and may or may not contribute to the afore-mentioned emotional shovel to the face when you finally reach Constantinople.

* The sort of atmosphere you don't get in ordinary adventure games. As "The Last Express" takes place on the Orient Express, you only really get 7 locations in the entire game, and you'll feel like you're on a train where there isn't that much space (chances are you'll find yourself ducking out of the way of conductors in the corridors of the sleeping cars, for instance.) But despite that, each section of the train is so well detailed that if there isn't that much to explore, well, it doesn't matter; I'm just going to sit down on this comfy chair in the Smoking Car and have a cigarette...oh, wait, it's not real. Also, it's July 24th when the game starts, and both because of historical knowledge and what happens in-game you can feel that World War I is quite literally within hours of blowing up. This greatly adds to the tension, even though what you do on the train really in no way affects the things about to happen in the greater world.

* Extremely engaging gameplay, despite the fact that there are only about two 'conventional' puzzles in the game. You'd think that sitting in the back of a dining car listening in on what a German arms dealer, a French family, and a Russian count and his granddaughter are saying would be boring. You'd be wrong. The fact that the game runs on a real-time fast clock, and that the other characters on the train will see to their own affairs whether or not you're around, also helps make gameplay fun: you want to hear what those conductors are saying down at the end of the corridor, but Anna Wolff just went into the dining car, and you want to hear what she has to say to Herr Schmidt, and you can't be everywhere at once...this also increases replayability, as maybe that next playthrough (which will happen) you go eavesdrop on the conductors instead, which might have consequences going forward. And when you fail, you can just rewind the clock to when you think you went wrong and try again.

The only drawback I can note is that I gather that this particular edition introduces some bugs in terms of certain sound loops that don't play. While I never played the original, I noticed this absence on my own and found it a bit immersion-breaking; my understanding is, however, that versions available elsewhere resolve this issue.

So, in conclusion: regardless of where you might get it, The Last Express gets a score of 15/10. I've got a one-way ticket to Constantinople in my pocket, and I'm going to get this train through no matter what. And no, Anna, I wasn't planning on STOPPING in Belgrade!

As a connisseur of loading screens and menus, this game has without a doubt the best ones in the Tropico series! Would like to know how the game plays, but unfortunately...

Pros: Great menus and loading screens!

Cons: Kalypso didn't bother to consider that not everyone has a top-of-the-line graphics card, and didn't make that need clear when offering this for pre-order.

Sum-up: Got a great computer? Enjoy the game! For the rest of us? Enjoy Tropico 4. Last time you get my money, Kalypso.

Welp, after 7 1/2 years, I have to revise this. At the end of 2013, the following was true:

Europa Universalis IV is another excellent Grand Strategy game from Paradox. The gameplay is very enjoyable, and the sheer number of different countries available allow for almost endless replayability. My only caveat is that the graphics engine seems skewed towards higher-end operating systems; even after turning all the settings down as low as possible there's still a fair bit of lag. However, overall EUIV is an amazingly good game and one any fan of strategy games should certainly get.

...Unfortunately, today, EUIV is an unplayable mess. It's been on the slide since at least Golden Century, but finally it's achieved its long-time goal:

Paradox


The Shark

Uh, get this. Is good!